kitchen flooring conundrum

autumngalFebruary 17, 2009

We are in the process of renovating our kitchen in our 1898 home. There are layers of linoleum and plywood that we pulled up to reveal a wood sub floor. My original plan was to simply refinish this sub floor (which looks like it might just have been painted a dark color originally). But there is an addition on the back of the kitchen which has a plywood sub floor.

I'm now at a loss- my husband just wants to put wood over all of it, but the idea of stepping from wood to wood seems strange to me. I'm contemplating tile, I'm also considering painting the floor with a design (I painted the floor on the third floor, which was always painted and it came out really nicely). Any suggestions?

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The configuration goes from our dining room (which has recently refinished hard wood) to a butlers pantry (which currently has linoleum, but I'm sure has wood under which we will refinish) to the kichen, which has wood in the first two thirds and plywood in the last third. We would be putting a new floor in the whole of the kitchen. So you would be moving from the wood of the pantry to the floor of the kitchen. It's the step up, even though it's under an inch that gets me. It seems weird to have that transition if there is no transition in material.

We haven't talked about the exact kind of wood yet, I think once we make the choice to do wood, we can tackle that decision. It's more if we should make that choice to do wood or another material.

If you don't decide to do wood, maybe consider linoleum (marmoleum). I think that would be period appropriate (you are already pulling up layers of it) and it comes in some nice colors and with the flexibility to do patterns now. I would have considered it in my kitchen, but I was afraid of having to "wax" it like you had to the old linoleum products. From what I've read since I chose tile, new forms of linoleum don't seem to have the difficulty of upkeep the old ones did. Just a thought.

I had good luck finding reclaimed wood that matched the original in my kitchen and the foyer of our master BR> We had to patch the wood in the kitchen in one place. I sure would try that first. It is much less expensive than laying a whole new floor and then the floors would match in height if you lay it on the plywood sub floor only. I had posted a pic showing a tiny step up and it is the same wood. It doens't look funny at all and your feet get used to it. Here is the pic..it shows the change from kitchen to master br foyer and also the patched wood is in the foyer...matches perfectly with other old wood.

Trailrunner, thank you so much- that's exactly what I needed to see. I thought the transition would be strange, but it's really not. That looks fantastic! As always, I just love your transolms.

Kimkitchy, thanks for the suggestion of marmoleum. I have to confess that despite the many beautiful marmoleum and linoleum floors I've seen here on GW, I just don't like it. I know it's even period appropriate (although it was not originally used in our house, the first layer of lino is obviously much later). Maybe I should do it just to get over my silly prejudice.

Our kitchen has a wood floor which was under about 3 layers of vinyl tile. Refinished, it's lovely, and much easier to stand on than the tile I had in newer houses. A neighbor put real linoleum on her kitchen floor and that looks good too.